With films that have been or are currently banned in their country of origin comes an instant intrigue in me. Apparently this film was banned for “exposing the harsh realities of East German society,” but that statement, seen on the back of the DVD cover, is a little ambiguous. While watching the film you do get a vague understanding of the politics and lack of justice in the judicial system of 1960s Germany; you begin to understand that the film's “anti-socialist” message could have come as a great threat. However, there is a lot left unexplained—a lot that you have to go and research on your own, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Somehow you don't mind being led into a haze because the film's heroine, a blacklisted 19-year old, is an astounding portrait of the system's failure. Her will to overcome the setbacks of an “opportunist” and unjust society gives you hope. It's that hope of something better and more democratic that could have been contagious, and was therefore silenced. Still, The Rabbit is Me is hailed as one of the most important New Wave films to come out of Germany.

What will the Europe of the future look like? In the opinion of the great Dane Lars von Trier Europe will be polluted, plagued, and riddled with an existential numbness preventing connection of any kind between its inhabitants. Life for Europeans will vacillate between madness and extremism and boredom and anonymity. Von Trier’s prognostications are manifested in his Europa trilogy: The Element of Crime (1984) set in the future, Epidemic (1987) set in the present, and Europa (1991) set in the fall of 1945 after the German surrender to the Allied forces. In Europa, von Trier extrapolates his fears for the future of Europe from its past, finding parallels in the alienation and chaos of post-war Germany replicated in the angst of modern Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Western Europe was facing the same problem of the Allies after WWII:  now that you’ve won, how do you turn the enemy you vilified into a trustworthy ally?